


Consort Conservation

by InfraVioletUltraRed



Series: From Radish Farmer to the Zora Royal Consort [19]
Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 15:38:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19321096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfraVioletUltraRed/pseuds/InfraVioletUltraRed
Summary: Sorry for the timeskip! and that this wrap-up was supposed to be a three-part thing and I split it into four. I have parts 2 and 3 done, but not 4 yet. Soon! (just means that you guys get more Sidon content from me, so it's not ALL bad, huh?)





	Consort Conservation

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the timeskip! and that this wrap-up was supposed to be a three-part thing and I split it into four. I have parts 2 and 3 done, but not 4 yet. Soon! (just means that you guys get more Sidon content from me, so it's not ALL bad, huh?)

In the two decades you’d spent in the Zora’s Domain, you had become familiar with its beauty and charm, with its history, its denizens, with the area surrounding, and intimately so with your husband, its prince.

And it was on the eve of your twentieth wedding anniversary that he came to speak to you in especially secluded privacy about an important matter. Normally, you two would discuss things like this out in the Eastern Reservoir, or in your shared room. But not this time. You two sat up on Shatterback Point, legs dangling over the cliff edge as you talked. No one else would hear you here.

“My pearl,” he began, running his claws together in a way he seemed to have picked up from you, “I have a proposition for you.”

“What’s that?”

“While you’re still the lovely lily blossom you were when we first met twenty years ago, the years stack up for Hylians much faster than they do for Zora, do they not?”

You nodded, recalling the time you and he had spent discussing lifespans and life stages of your respective species. The pups still only came up to about your chest, and you were small, and they were twenty years old—Sidon himself hadn’t finished his second growth spurt, to be the height he was now, until he was 105.

Even if none of that about Zora growth and development was relevant, you couldn’t argue with the plain statement Sidon had made-- true middle age wasn’t yet upon you, but you weren’t _as_ long for the world as Sidon was. He had several decades ahead of him past your next four or five.

_Unless your aging was stilled so he could catch up to you, proportionally._

And that was his proposition. He wanted you to rule at his side when the time came for him to ascend the throne, but he didn’t want those years to be full of the suffering of your old age… if you made it that long.

He wished his father and you both long lives, but the way he saw it, if the overlap of your lifespans continued _now_ , there was no knowing who would outlive the other, or by how long.

In any event, it would be more than Sidon would be able to bear, losing his father, taking on the role of king, and having to survive his spouse, in whatever order all that occurred. So, if possible, he wanted to prevent that.

The question was _how_.

Neither of you knew at that moment. You weren’t even sure if was possible. But it was worth looking into, before resigning yourselves to accepting that though you two were blessed to have few complications of your inter-species marriage, that this would be the biggest of them.

The other thing you had to do was tell Pearl, Lotus, and Etora of what you two hoped to accomplish.

_

You and Sidon had looped Link into the research and discussion, as well, as someone who had been revived after a century’s sleep.

He didn’t have the answers you desired, but he did know someone who _might_. As he’d always done for you, he couldn’t give you exactly what you needed, but he would get you to someone who would.

So Purah was called from Hateno Village to the Domain, where you and Sidon explained what you wanted, and asked her if she could do it.

As it turned out, she could. You looked into her equally childlike and owlish eyes, and asked her how.

“The same way I brought Link back! And turned the clock back on myself.”

“I’m not going to age backwards, am I?” you asked her. You might not have minded going back to being the age you had been when you moved into the Domain, as long as you didn’t go back too far in years…

Purah wasn’t going to make any promise of years lost or gained, but she promised you wouldn’t be in quite the same boat she was. Thank the goddesses.

After that, it was only a matter of constructing the necessary structure-- similar to the Resurrection Bed Link had woken up from years back, a little before you and he had met.

Oh, and telling the Zora populace what was going on. You left that part to Sidon, though. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to be involved, but you weren’t sure what to say.

In truth, as much as you wanted to be there to see your children as adults, and to help Sidon rule later on, there was so much about this that you weren’t sure about. For instance, whenever you woke up, your family, your friends, they would be gone. Hyrule would be different. Would your leisurely rides through the Hyrulian countryside be the same? Would the paths and roads have changed? Would the same landmarks you’d used to navigate still be there?

Nyx would certainly be no more. You’d need to catch and train another horse.

This was, in short, a little scary. You would be waking up to a new world. The only thing you would know on the other side would be Sidon and the pups, and maybe the Domain, if things hadn’t changed much there.

You only knew one person you could talk to about this, because he had lived through it: Link.

So while Purah and her team talked Sidon through the planning and construction of your Cryonis Bed, you and Link went riding through Hyrule together, talking the whole way, so you could get your feelings out and hear his experiences.

It was funny, you realized when Epona and Nyx were at a steady gallop one day and you and Link had fallen temporarily silent, that while you had heard about the Hyrule Link had known before all he could remember was waking to the sound of Zelda’s voice in the Resurrection bed, you had never really heard how he’d felt about waking up somewhere pretty much foreign to him.

You, at least, would have your memories intact. He hadn’t had the luxury.

Now that you asked, though, he told you that it had been daunting. He wasn’t exactly scared to be in the foreign future, but it was intimidating to be new in town, when it had once been that the town itself was newer than he was.

He laughed a little as he said that in a way, he envied you. You would get to wake up to your family that had been waiting for you. He’d woken to the responsibility of saving the world.

“Then again,” he said around the mouth of his water skin, then offering some to Epona, “I didn’t have to rule a section of Hyrule, and certainly not of non-Hylians, some of whom won’t know how hard I worked to be accepted among them. Everybody knew who I was and I had no expectation of diplomacy. I was allowed to walk around silent and confused all the time. So maybe my experience wasn’t so bad.”

“You feeling wordy today?” you asked him with a smile.

He laughed and got back on Epona, so you climbed onto Nyx.

“No one’s ever asked me about how waking up felt. So I didn’t know how much I had to say.”

_

If nothing else, Purah’s team worked fast, and they were done before the seasons had changed. Luckily, you had all the information from Link that you felt you needed, so when Purah told you that your Cryonis Bed was ready for you whenever you were ready for it, you didn’t feel unprepared.

Filled with trepidation, sure, but not unprepared.

So, you spent your last few waking hours in the throne room, not knowing when you’d see the five people with you (six, if you counted Muzu, you guessed) again.

Or rather, you knew a general when—when it was time. But you didn’t know when _that_ would be.

When it was getting close to bedtime for the pups, you shuffled them off to their rooms—Pearl and Etora to their shared room, and Lotus to his—and then, Sidon helped you get ready to be placed in your bed, and enter a deep, extensive sleep.

You hadn’t known what to wear at first, and hadn’t wanted to think about it. It felt a little morbid to you, like choosing what to be buried in. But you supposed plenty of people did that, too. Still. It made you oddly nervous.

You sat in front of your mirror, looking yourself over. Sidon had helped you into the armor he’d made for his engagement present to you, and with it, you wore what you’d worn at your wedding—the one that had taken place before the whole Domain, that is. The bigger, more formal one.

Those were some of the most beautiful clothes you owned, your wedding clothes.

You styled your hair, too, while staring at yourself in the mirror. You almost wanted to cry, but you weren’t sure it was appropriate. There was no reason to be sad. Doing this was going to make it so that you could stay with Sidon, and your children, for longer in the future.

You weren’t dying.

But you did wonder what you were going to miss.

Sidon walked you to the Cryonis Bed, and let you get settled. You thought about how many times you’d walked through the Domain in the dark, hesitant and anticipating what came next.

Well, here you were, on the brink of finding out.

“Comfortable, dearest?” he asked you.

You nodded. Purah clapped her hands, and fiddled with the technology.

The last thing you remembered before an all-consuming darkness was a kiss to your cheek.


End file.
